Judy and Mrs. Riker and the children were all in the back seat. It had grown a little uncomfortable with Penny and Paul bouncing from one window to the other and finding magic in everything.
Both children now took it for granted that the magician had made the trees talk. The matter was all settled in their minds, but not in Judy’s.
“There are two kinds of magic,” she told them. “I like the natural kind best. Even that voice you’re talking about could have been the wind. Sometimes it does make a funny moaning noise when the trees are bare and the branches swing against each other.”
“Now, Judy, you know it wasn’t,” Honey objected from her place in front beside Horace. “The wind wasn’t blowing as hard as it is now, and these trees aren’t talking—”
“So they aren’t!” Horace commented as if the whole thing was nothing but a big joke.
They were driving through a thickly wooded section. A rabbit ran across the road, and the children squealed and nearly let Blackberry leap out of the car after it. Then Paul said something about how clever the magician had been to make a puppy jump out of his hat.
“I didn’t get my wish yet,” Paul added, “but I can wait for it.”
“I got mine,” Penny whispered, “but I’m not telling what it was.”
Still deeper in the woods they came suddenly into a cleared place where a number of deer had taken shelter under a big pine tree. They stood motionless for a moment and then vanished into a thicket.
“That’s what I mean about natural magic,” Judy pointed out. “Those deer vanished under their own power—no tricks!”